"It was not a good situation," he said Sunday night from his home in Emmaus, Pa. "I slowed down, and very cautiously crept into Manchester. It was really nasty."

It was windy and cold. There were 3 or 4 inches of snow on the roads. But Burfoot, who had won the 4.748-mile Manchester Road Race in 1968 and 1969, had made it there and nothing was going to stop him from running the way he always did, just like nothing will keep him from his 50th consecutive race Thursday.

"I always felt you strip down and go to the starting line, and race the damn thing," Burfoot said. "There was John Vitale next to me all bundled up, looking like he was going on an expedition to Antarctica. That was one of the few times I thought I would beat him."

Burfoot did beat Vitale, the defending champion, that day, winning his third Manchester title in 23 minutes, 45 seconds. It was his ninth Manchester Road Race; his streak of consecutive Thanksgiving Day races was still in its infancy.

Thursday, Burfoot will tie the record set by one of his mentors, Charley "Doc" Robbins of Middletown, who was the first to complete 50 straight in 2001. Robbins died in 2006 at age 85.

"Stuff happens over 50 years," said Burfoot, 66, who is an editor at large at Runner's World magazine. "I had days when I couldn't race and I was just doing my own solitary journey around Manchester. But there was never a time I didn't want to be there.

"Once you get to a certain point, you keep going. Fifty is a very powerful number to keep you going. Doc Robbins did 50. And he was one of my earliest running inspirations."

Burfoot, who won the race nine times from 1968 to 1977, first ran Manchester in the fall of 1963, following his senior year of cross country at Fitch High in Groton.

He went to Manchester that year with his coach, Johnny Kelley, the 1957 Boston Marathon champion who had won Manchester six times between 1951-62.

It was Burfoot's first road race. He had only run 2½-mile cross country races up to that point.

"It was absolutely the second most important race in New England," Burfoot said. "The Boston Marathon in the spring and the Manchester Road Race in the fall. There were maybe only 100 runners, but it was the biggest road race in the state. There were world-class runners and NCAA champions. It had tremendous popular support in the town of Manchester. It was a wonderful stage. It was big time.

"I already had in my head and heart I was going to be a marathoner, I couldn't wait to run something more than 2½ miles. To run a race that had actual adults in it, national champions … To me, it was like the first time you go to Paris or something. I felt like a citizen of the running world. It opened my eyes. I wanted more."

He won the high school division in 25:59. And he was hooked.

He came back year after year. Driving through the snow in 1971. Coming home from El Salvador in 1973, where he was working for the Peace Corps, for his father's funeral. He stayed a month afterward, training to get in shape quickly for Manchester. And somehow it worked. He won again. He ran the year he had walking pneumonia, around 1982. Another year, his Achilles' tendon was acting up but he couldn't break the streak.

One year, brother-in-law Bill Billing started making the annual trip to Manchester with Burfoot. Billing, of Mystic, will run his 40th straight race Thursday. Billing's son Jeff, who is a math teacher and baseball coach at Hall High in West Hartford, will run for the 21st consecutive year.

Burfoot's wife, Cristina Negron, can. Her birthday falls around Thanksgiving and when people ask her if she is doing anything special, she tells them, with a sigh, not really, she's going to Connecticut.

"I will be in Connecticut as long as Amby has breath in his body," Negron said, laughing. "I did know that [when we married]. I just didn't know [the race] was so much a part of his identity.

"It took a conversation with his sister. She said, 'This is who he is.' I said, 'OK, I'll stop complaining.' It is lovely to see. Because Amby is a humble man. That's one of his great qualities. To see him honored on this day, it's wonderful. It's something he deserves."

Negron, who has run a number of times at Manchester, added, "I do joke with him it was pretty smart of him to pick a 5-mile race. He's going to be able to run, walk or crawl Manchester until it's all over."

Burfoot wears No. 2 (Robbins wore No. 1 and now it's retired). He is given a spot in the front to start among the elite athletes.

"He always goes out way too hard in the first mile," Jeff Billing said. "I'll see him on the hill and he'll grunt something about him going out too hard."

Burfoot won the Boston Marathon in 1968. But for him, running 50 consecutive Manchester Road Races is a bigger accomplishment.

"For one of them [the marathon], you were in the right place in the right time," Burfoot said. "But sticking with it for many years, staying out there, even if you get slower, it's the right thing to do. I'm going to keep going as long as I can."